


Open

by bumblegwen



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Fluff, Love Confessions, M/M, in this household we ignore the canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-17 04:07:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29219238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bumblegwen/pseuds/bumblegwen
Summary: Jimmy Kent is leaving Downton Abbey forever. Thomas Barrow decides he can't let that happen. He has just one more chance, out in the open.Takes place just after that heart-crushing scene of Jimmy Kent leaving at the beginning of Season 5.Uses prompt 12. 'Stay.'
Relationships: Thomas Barrow/Jimmy Kent
Comments: 5
Kudos: 53
Collections: Well I love you: Valentines for Thomas Barrow





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**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this today for the Well, I love you: Valentines for Thomas Barrow prompt challenge. Next to no editing because I'm leaving for work soon and my last fic has left my brain with only one last brain cell.

The cart clinked and clunked as Jimmy climbed onto it. Thomas couldn’t watch this. He stared at the back door, his jaw set, his hands clenched, on the verge of shaking. The lump in his throat did not shrink as the cart rattled away from him, it grew. He forced himself to turn around, step by step, and watched as Jimmy sank into the bright greenery ahead.

As the juddering click-clack of horse’s hooves and iron wheels faded, Thomas’ fingers uncurled. Cold, heavy, iron numbness wrapped around his chest. It constricted. It should have been painful, yet it flowed unfazed through his body like an avalanche. The tips of his fingers felt the absence of feeling too. Just moments ago those fingers had been warm in the grip of Jimmy. The lump expanded until oxygen could no longer pass. Thomas heaved. The air cut his throat.

There was the pain again. The feeling. He shut his eyes and breathed in again. His fists clenched again and though no one was there to see it, he shook his head and opened his eyes.

Thomas ran.

Now his breathing hurt like knives slashing down his oesophagus and seared his lungs. The blighty in his hand burned and throbbed, pulsating up his arm as he drove himself forward, faster and faster. He hadn’t run like this in years, but he ignored the screaming agony. Stones and potholes in the path unrolling from the servant’s yard tried to falter him. He stumbled and carried on.

Rounding the abbey, he pushed on, the ground flattening underneath his feet, granting him a strong breeze behind him. And there it was. Steady along the neat path, it rambled on as if the world were not on the brink of collapse.

‘Wait! Stop!’ he yelled, voice cracking and splintering.

By some miracle, the cart slowed. Thomas whimpered involuntarily. Not too late. He jogged the last hundred metres until he too panted to a stop, doubling over his hands on his knees.

Before anything, whether reason or fear, had the chance to intervene, Thomas marched up to the cart and to Jimmy with his confused face. The young man’s brow furrowed, curls of hair falling from his cap that rendered him stunning under the weak sunlight, but Thomas did not let himself linger.

‘Get down.’ he snipped.

‘Mr Barrow, what- ’

‘Just get down, now.’

Jimmy muttered something to the driver and jumped down with ease. His face had not changed, surveying Thomas’ haggard breathing and windswept hair with caution. It didn’t matter.

Momentum built up in Thomas’ chest like a train. Now or never. He sucked in a deep breath.

‘I’ll deal with his lordship,’ he blurted out, ‘there’s a million things I can hold over his head, and Carson, and all of them. I don’t care how. I don’t care if they sack me too, I have to try- and Mrs Hughes won’t be difficult, she’ll- ’

Jimmy stared at him like he’d gone mad.

‘What… what are you sayin’?’

Thomas formed his answer firmly, ‘Stay.’

Jimmy shook his head, ‘I’m done for, Mr Barrow.’

‘I can fix it,’ Thomas insisted, ‘I can. Just stay. Stay for me.’

Jimmy took a step back.

‘Don’t make me beg, Jimmy.’ Thomas said softly.

‘Mr Barrow- Thomas,’ Jimmy said, stumbling over his words, ‘I don’t understand. Why’re you doin’ this? Why where they can see us?’

Thomas pointedly did not look at the golden abbey looming behind him.

‘Because I don’t care if they can see, there’s no point in- in hidin’ that…’

For the first time, Thomas paused. The sound of his own breathing filled his ears. Jimmy’s expression, all those line around his eyes and mouth, full lips, the strong jaw that softened when he laughed or played the piano. That ridiculous blond hair flicking from his forehead. His shoulders, his brown suit, the rough but dextrous fingers on the end of each hand. Thomas drank him in like nectar.

‘That I’m desperately bloody in love with you.’ he said in one breath.

Jimmy stared. And stared. His blue eyes focused in on Thomas’ as his lips parted, and still all Thomas could hear was the sound of his own heavy breathing. His heart galloped.

‘Please say somethin’.’ he said.

Jimmy smiled weakly, ‘I’m tryin’. It’s not every day you hear that.’

‘You’re my best friend, Jimmy, an’ I won’t hold it against you if you go, or if you stay and you don’t feel the same, but… Christ, this has to mean somethin’, doesn’t it? Is it… am I enough?’

Thomas had not meant to pour out this much of his soul, but in the face of Jimmy, he couldn’t help himself. Loving Jimmy was as easy and as hard as breathing, trying not to love him was like taking a wrench to his ribs and prising his heart from his chest. He almost smiled. Nothing sat in the shadows anymore. No more secrets. In loving Jimmy out in the open, he was the most himself he had ever been.

If it weren’t for the nervous doubt seeping into Jimmy’s face, from his pursing mouth to the lines deepening between his eyebrows, he would be beaming like an idiot.

‘I told you before,’ Jimmy said slowly, ‘I told you I can’t give you what you want.’

Thomas shattered inside. But that was alright. He lifted the corners of his mouth with some effort. He knew he looked devasted, that his smile was failing, but there was nothing else to do.

‘You did. I had to try.’ Thomas nodded stiffly, ‘Goodbye, Jimmy.’

Jimmy returned the nod and climbed back up onto the cart.

The shattering and falling apart did not stop as Thomas turned away. With every step he took back towards the abbey, more and more pieces shed away like a pickaxe to ice. It hurt though, and that was good. Hurt meant feeling. Hurt meant the feeling of loving Jimmy, of the skin of his neck against his palm, of his cheeky smiles, would never leave him.

Oddly, there was no clatter of wheels as he walked. Thomas looked over his shoulder after only a couple of metres. What he saw made him halt and turn yet again.

Jimmy held onto the side of the cart with both hands, halfway through pulling himself up. His eyes screwed shut, as though he were swearing and cursing in his mind. Thomas’ face fell. As though Jimmy was battling with himself. Thomas told himself to keep walking, but his legs refused.

‘Christ’s sake, Thomas Barrow.’

Jimmy’s mutterings came in just over the breeze. As Thomas’ heart leapt, Jimmy retreated from the cart and crossed the distance to him. Just a foot away, Jimmy stopped, eyes gazing to the side at nothing. Thomas did not dare say a word.

‘Why did you have to say all that?’ Jimmy sighed.

Removing his hat and clutching it in his fist, Jimmy scowled at the end of the sigh. His hand went to the top of his nose as if just standing here with Thomas caused pain. Thomas swallowed thickly. Now he dared not even move.

‘I’ll stay.’ Jimmy said suddenly. Thomas, who hadn’t realised he was staring at the ground, lifted his head in astonishment.

‘What?’ he burst out.

Jimmy met his eyes, his gaze forceful and determined behind the blue.

‘I don’t know how we’ll do it, but I want to stay. I… I want to stay, with you.’

With that, Thomas moved past Jimmy and grabbed his bags down from the cart, apologising to the driver as he did so. Meanwhile, Jimmy stood motionless as the cart trundled off, leaving Thomas and Jimmy alone on the path surrounded by lawn. Thomas set the suitcase on the ground and sighed in relief.

‘Are you alright?’ he asked gently.

Instead of answering, Jimmy walked up to Thomas and crushed him in a hug. Thomas held the back of Jimmy’s head to his chest and buried his face in Jimmy’s shoulder. They remained there, alone, for how long neither knew, with nothing to break the fragile silence.

They walked back without a word, Thomas carrying Jimmy’s suitcase. He narrowed his eyes at the abbey. He had a lot of work to do.


End file.
